But Dr Wollaston said: “Presumably this complete tosh planted by someone who has no understanding of consent to treatment.

But Dr Wollaston said: “Presumably this complete tosh planted by someone who has no understanding of consent to treatment.”

Posting on Twitter, she added: “When I say it’s a ‘no brainer’ I mean this unethical, unworkable kite flying comes from someone with no brain.”

Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb also blasted the plan.

He said: “The idea that you frogmarch someone into therapy with the threat of a loss of benefits simply won’t work. You actually need someone to go into therapy willingly.”

The “someone with no brain” is unmoved by the opinion of health-care professionals, or indeed by common sense.

Iain plans to go ahead with the plan,

trial scheme is expected to begin this year.

Government insiders say 46% of the 260,000 people on Employment and Support Allowance have mental health problems.

A source said: “Loads of people who claim ESA undergo no treatment whatsoever. It is bizarre. This is a real problem because we want people to get better.”

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “ESA / WCA (Work Capability Assessment) was introduced by previous Government in 2008 and we knew it wasn’t working as well as it should – including for people with mental health conditions.

“That is why we instigated a rolling review of the WCA and have made improvements for people with mental health conditions including introducing mental health champions.

“We are always looking at ways to further improve the system and support more people with mental health conditions at work, including through the use of these pilots.”

22 Responses

Money Wastage
1. Despite all the rhetoric about cutting welfare spending, it has actually increased by £24 billion this parliament (evidence & evidence)
2. Iain Duncan Smith’s Departmental Spend on Private Consultants has jumped 59% in just 1 year (evidence)
3. Iain Duncan Smith’s Departmental Spend on temporary staff has jumped 91% in just 1 year (evidence)
4. £150million+ of taxpayers’ money has already been spent on court fees related to successful appeals against unfair WCA assessments (evidence)
5. The DWP have written off £140million in overpaid Housing Benefit paid in error since October 2010 (evidence)
6. £241m of taxpayers’ money is set to be wasted in IT overspend, including £34m write offs, for Iain Duncan-Smith’s Universal Credit says the National Audit Office (evidence)
7. DWP Audited Accounts show that at least £90 million of IT spend on Universal Credit will have to be written off, a near trebling in the 3 months after the mentioned NAO report (above) (evidence)
8. Iain Duncan Smith’s Department handed a £60million contract to a firm to carry out the Work Programme without putting the proper checks in place to detect fraud or irregularity says the NAO (evidence)
9. Despite all of the tough talk on clamping down on benefit fraud it has remained the same over the last three years (2010-11) (2011-12) (2012-13)
Targeting the Disabled
10. 3 judges found that the government’s Work capability Assessment discriminated against the mentally ill (evidence)
11. 475,000 Disabled People have been made to work unpaid on the Tory Work Programme (evidence)
12. The number of disabled & sick people to suffer an ESA sanction has jumped by a third since 2009-10 (evidence)
13. 38% of those who appeal ESA sanctions have won their cases & have been found to be wrongly punished (evidence & evidence)
14. Iain Duncan Smith withdrew funding for Remploy Factories that resulted in 34 of them closing (evidence)
15. 20,000 Medical Assessments, a year, of the sick & disabled for benefit eligibility are carried out in unprofessional circumstances (evidence)
16. Since 2008 (so including the last years of New Labour), new benefit claimants have suffered, on average, 24 days of delays before receiving the Work Capability Assessment (evidence)
Failure of Work Programme(s)
17. The Supreme Court threw out Iain Duncan Smith’s appeal that the Work Programme was legally flawed after an aspiring curator took a case against the DWP for forcing her to work unpaid (evidence & evidence)
18. The Tories have put in place a system where disabled 1.4 million people are sent on the Work Programme to work unpaid for firms including many multi-national corporations who avoid tax in the UK. The corporation is then paid a bonus payment for accepting the free labour (evidence). This is despite the Tory Minister saying that no big firm would benefit from cheap labour.
19. Of the 1.4million to be placed on the Tory Work Programme, just 10% achieved a job outcome (evidence, evidence & evidence)
20. At present, the Work Programme is on course to cost taxpayers £15,000 for every job it creates which may lead some to conclude that doing nothing would be more successful than the Work Programme (evidence, evidence & evidence)
21. The Tory Back to Work Scheme for Troubled Families wastes £200 million on helping just 3% of the families’ targeted (evidence)
22. The amount of disabled people helped through Access to Work has fallen by 18% since the Tories came to power (evidence)
Failing our Youth
23. Youth Unemployment is up 5% since May 2010(evidence)
24. Out of 200 leading businesses not a single 1 says it has employed a single person under the Youth Contract (evidence)
25. The government’s Youth Contract scheme has been a monumental failure with just over 4,000 payments being made – a figure much lower than the 160,000 the government’s £457m scheme had planned (evidence)
26. The Tories scrapped Labour’s Future Jobs Fund even though it has proved more than 5 times more successful than the Youth Contract (evidence, evidence & evidence)
Hunger
27. There are now 707 Food Banks operating in the UK, a growth of 613% since David Cameron became Prime Minister (evidence)
28. The number of people using Trussell Trust Food Banks has grown from 40,000 in the last year under Labour to 500,000 in the 9 months from April-December 2013 (evidence)
29. David Cameron turned down EU Cash for Food Banks says the European Parliament (evidence)
30. The government halted the collection of Food Bank statistics to cover up an explosion in the number of people using them (evidence)
31. As the nation debated hunger and the growth of food banks, the Minister responsible snuck out of the meeting (evidence)
32. Iain Duncan Smith has treated the leading Food Bank charity Trussell Trust appallingly, first refusing to meet them and then accusing them of scaremongering (evidence)
Bedroom Tax
33. 250 Government MPs voted to inflict the Bedroom Tax on 660,000 Britons even though there were no homes available for 95% of those affected to actually move into (evidence)
34. 415,800 of those hit with the Bedroom Tax are disabled says Iain Duncan Smith’s team (evidence)
35. 1 in 5 of those hit with the Bedroom Tax are lone parents admits Iain Duncan Smith (evidence)
36. The government introduced a Bedroom Tax of 14% on Homes deemed to be under-occupying 1 bedroom and a 25% charge on those deemed to be under-occupying 2 Bedrooms (Page 64)
37. The government bungled the Bedroom Tax legislation allowing a loophole that exempted up to 40,000 to exist. One of those exempt took her own life before the loophole became known (evidence)
38. David Cameron misled the House of Commons when he claimed that disabled people who needed a spare room were exempt from the Bedroom Tax (evidence). This could not be further from the truth.
39. The governments expected savings from the Bedroom Tax were based on lazy calculations that will not be achieved says housing report (evidence)
40. IDS wasted £75,000 of taxpayers’ cash on a Bedroom Tax poll (evidence)
41. The United Nations judged that the UK was failing in its duty to provide adequate housing to its citizens, a breach of article 25 of the declaration of Human rights (evidence)
Stigmatisation
42. This brilliant DPAC report highlights how Iain Duncan Smith has presided over 3 years of obfuscation and dishonesty in the Department of Work & Pensions (evidence)
43. Hate Crime against disabled person jumped by a third in the first two years of a Tory government (evidence)
44. Iain Duncan Smith said 100,000 are on benefits primarily due to drink and drugs but his own department show the figure is one fifth of that as 99%+ of those on sickness benefits are so for reasons other than drink or drugs. The Disabilities Minister also claimed more people were on the highest rate of DLA for drink & drunks than actually disabilities (evidence & evidence & evidence)
45. Iain Duncan-Smith stigmatised benefit claimants as fraudsters despite the fact that just 0.7% of benefits was is overpaid in Fraud in 2012-13 (evidence & evidence)
46. A growing percentage, 47%, of unemployed persons no longer claim Unemployment Benefit as the impact of government stigmatisation takes hold (evidence)
47. In an attempt to shift blame to the unemployed, for being unemployed, IDS claimed there were ½ a million new jobs available every week. The truth is ten times smaller than that figure (evidence)
48. In an attempt to blame worklessness as a cultural thing handed down from the generations IDS had this to say (evidence). This JRF report showed that the actual truth was that intergenerational worklessness was extremely rare (evidence)
49. Iain Duncan Smith & his Department stated that there were families living in large houses claiming £100,000 a year in benefits, but the data shows that there are just 59 families in the UK claiming £48k+ in benefits a 00.00001% of the number of people on benefits (evidence)
Premature Death
50. The number of Suicides has climbed 8% in 1 year (evidence)
51. 7 people are known to have committed or attempted to commit suicide, in part, due to the Bedroom Tax (evidence)
52. 1,100 persons died in the period after a Work Capability Assessment ruled that they would be fit to work at some point in the future and that they should begin to ready themselves for work (Work Related Activity Group) (evidence)
Fuel Poverty
53. There are 800,000 more households are living in Fuel Poverty say USwitch, despite government data showing otherwise (evidence)
54. The government have changed the definition of fuel poverty to hide the impact that recent price rises will have on the figures (evidence)
55. The Warm Homes Healthy People Fund saved lives from Winter Death (evidence) but the David Cameron has now axed it after initially promising otherwise (evidence)
56. As gas prices rise 30% under the Tories, the number of excess Winter Deaths has jumped 29% in just 1 year (evidence)
Poverty
57. The number of Working Poor has overtaken the number of out of work poor under the Tories say the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (evidence)
58. The number of in-work households now relying on Housing Benefits has doubled to over 1 million under the Tories says Iain Duncan Smith’s Department (evidence)
59. The number of Children in Child Poverty is up 300,000 (13%) under the Tories after having fell 50% under Labour say the Office for National Statistics (evidence)
60. The number of UK people At Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion has grown by 1,689,000 since 31 December 2009 says European Statistics Agency (evidence)
61. 2.2 million people classed as being in poverty in 2008 are no longer classed as poor even though their incomes have fallen since then (Page 14)
Housing
62. According to the UK Statistics Authority, Iain Duncan Smith’s Department lied about the success of the Benefit Cap (evidence)
63. Homelessness has increased by at least 26% under the Tories (evidence)
64. Rough Sleeping in London has grown 85% since Boris Johnson became Mayor (evidence)
65. The replacement of Council Tax Benefit with Council Tax Support meant that 2.4 million of the poorest households from April 2013 were left paying more (evidence)
66. Despite nearly half of homes being deemed Sub-Standard, Iain Duncan-Smith’s Universal Credit Bill forces the poor to move into the lowest 33% of accommodation (Page 19 & Annex 3.3)
Children
67. The government cut the Child Maintenance Enforcement budget by £116m & charged parents to apply for Child Enforcement Assistance (evidence)
68. George Osborne cut Child Tax Credits for middle-income households earning collectively £40,000-£50,000 a year (evidence)
69. In June 2010 the Tories froze Child Benefit Payments for 3 years, axed Sure Start Maternity Grants and abolished Child Trust Fund payments (Page 48)
70. From January 2013, the Tories axed Child Benefit for middle income households with a pre-tax income of £50,000 (Page 64)
71. In 2011-12 the government cut the funding for Childcare by 10% (amounting to a £4bn cut over 5 years) (Page 44)
Cuts
72. DWP, the department that is supposed to boost employment has axed 16,580 of its own staff in just two years (evidence)
73. The last publicly available data showed that the Tories had closed, or were in the process of closing 44 Jobcentres (evidence)
74. Jobcentre Plus Staff have been cut by a fifth at a time when they are needed more than ever, including nearly 1,000 axed in the first year (evidence & evidence)
75. The Jobcentre Plus budget was cut by £160 million in the first year of a Tory government (evidence)
76. The Institute of Fiscal Studies say benefits for the sick & disabled have been cut by 1.7% in real terms in just 1 year (evidence)
77. In 2011, the Tories froze the basic element of Working Tax Credits for 3 years (Page 44)
78. The government have frozen benefits for 3 years at below the rate of inflation amount to real terms cut of £1,000 per person affected (evidence)
Unequal treatment of mothers
79. From 2015, Lone Parents (90% of whom are women) will be required to prepare for work once a child turns 3 (evidence)
80. A real terms cut of 1-2% per year Statutory Maternity Pay is being implemented over three years, in a policy opponents have dubbed the “Mummy Tax” (evidence)
81. The majority of the people hit by Iain Duncan Smith’s Benefit Cap are lone parents (evidence)
82. Female Unemployment is up 5% since May 2010(evidence)
83. Long Term Female Unemployment up 80% since May 2010(evidence)
84. The Institute of Fiscal Studies show that the vast majority of married couples will not even be eligible for the Married Tax Allowance, a policy that is rooted in ideology not economics (evidence)
Underemployment
85. Temporary Workers seeking Full Time Work is up 8% since May 2010(evidence)
86. Part Timers seeking Full Time work is up 36% since May 2010(evidence)
87. Tory claims about employment/unemployment mask the truth. Unemployment is down just0.08m since May 2010, and the number of private sector jobs really created by the Tories is at about 300,000k less than they claim(evidence, evidence & evidence)
Workers’ Rights
88. The government made it easier to fire people by halving the amount of redundancy notice required (evidence)
89. Through the introduction of the Shares for Rights scheme that critics argue opens up a £1 billion tax loophole & rob workers of their statutory rights (evidence)
90. Breaches of the National Minimum Wage have climbed nearly a third under Iain Duncan Smith as he dithers on giving Councils the right to investigate breaches (evidence)
91. Unpaid Employment is up 26% since May 2010(evidence)
Anti-Immigration Rhetoric
92. The UK Statistics Authority wrote to Iain Duncan Smith to publicly disown statistics that emanated from the DWP Office on the Nationality of Benefit Claimants (evidence).
93. DWP continue to stigmatise migrants despite the fact that a European wide report into the prevalence of EU Migrants claiming benefits found they were 150% less likely to claim benefits than a UK born citizen (evidence & evidence)
94. Iain Duncan Smith’s Department stoked fears about waves of immigrants coming from Romania & Bulgaria to claim benefits when all evidence indicates that these fears were ill founded (evidence)
Universal Credit
95. The government admits it will fail to miss its own deadline for the roll out of Universal Credit by up to 2 years (evidence)
Pensions & Retirement
96. Iain Duncan Smith has increased the age of retirement to 68 (and it will rise further) (evidence)
97. The National Audit Office says the outcomes of the new auto-enrolment pensions are “uncertain” and that ultimately the taxpayer may end up footing the bill (evidence)
This is only the beginning
98. Post 2015, Iain Duncan Smith is strongly considering abolishing ESA for those categorised at WRAG (evidence)
99. From 2015, the Tories have said they will ban under-25 year olds from claiming Housing Benefit (evidence)
100. George Osborne has announced £25bn of more cuts, mostly on welfare, to pay for his failure to achieve economic growth (evidence)

The mentally ill will not actually be “cured” at all by this new private-business-company-compulsory-help-and-support regime.

The mentally ill will merely be reclassified “ATOS style” as fit-for-work – which doesn’t exist – and subsequently put on Jobseekers Allowance!

Putting mentally ill people on a treadmill of no-hope jobsearch (for 35 hours a week) is bound to prove disastrous – but try telling that to myopic Tories hell-bent on more cuts!

More disturbingly, I expect most people suffering from mental illness will be getting some kind of treatment already, so the use of Government compulsion in order to receive benefits is highly questionable.

Words are beginning to fail me. How many times have I said on here before that I wonder how much longer this inanity can go on – and still it goes on…and on…and on…

Some people have commented on here before about the matter of consent in relation to the so-called “compulsory” nature of the Work Programme – and some have claimed to have won their cases on the basis of a “no contract” with Work Programme providers.

Just make sure you don’t sign anything, and when asked by the Benefit Authorities for an explanation, answer as follows:

I have no contract with [enter name of private company carrying out “compulsory” psychiatric treatment]

I have no signed agreement with [enter name of private company again]

I do not consent to supply [enter name of private company] with any information

Any health care professional trying to give compulsory psychiatric treatment without a court order, would incur serious ethical and legal questions.

Nothing new here!, if memory serves me right, Reggie Kray (one of the Kray twins) died while being forcible held down undergoing a medical invasive procedure against his will…. No one was charged over his murder!.

CBT was given under the work programme by telephone appointment.needless to say what the outcome was.

Its completely unrealistic that the Dwp can expect to cure people with sanctions.health problems’ just do not go away. only last week a guardian article gave that the priority was to disrupt and upset people on esa called “providing additional support”

“…so compelling is the evidence of Universal Credit’s failure that any new secretary of state would be unable to establish their credibility without admitting to grave problems with the system — inevitably adding to the chorus of claims that Duncan Smith has repeatedly misled parliament.”

Indeed!, I think IDS wants to stay at the DWP as the new euthanasia centres that the three main parties want to introduce will probably be incorporated, come under the control of the DWP.

There will be tight controls when these euthanasia centres are first introduced to who can use them, two doctors will have to agree (Atos doctors?), so it will take someone that is a total psychopath to make the majority of the population believe that it would be a good thing if euthanasia centres were allowed to let the sick, disabled who are not terminally ill, the unemployed gain admission to use them, in some cases a decision maker at the DWP would make the decision for them!.

Lets face it, its the road we are going down, bit by bit, step by step…..